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That's not the product, and you're not the customer. If you ever have to go to the Patreon website after having become a patron to your desired creator, you're

That's not the product, and you're not the customer. If you ever have to go to the Patreon website after having become a patron to your desired creator, you're doing something wrong or they are. There is no reason in the world you should be leaning on patreon to serve content. You're the patron, your creator is your content maker who should be using other means to communicate the content to you (youtube? other web hosting? soundcloud? There are many ways, I use all of those) and your pledge is the product: the creator is the customer, not you. I truly don't care how silly the website is when they pay me my revenue like clockwork without issue. Patreon is not a web hosting service. Patreon collects subscriptions from patrons and manages that stuff, as well as anything else I've used.

manigandham 8y ago
The people paying the money are always the customers. Creators get to use Patreon as a tool for showcasing and delivering content and reward. This is a core part of the platform and why both sides use Patreon in the first place. In fact this whole story is about them raising rates to provide more "services" on top like selling merchandise. If all they're doing is collecting and forwarding money then they're one of the most poorly run businesses and massively overbuilt even with their subpar product.
irq11 8y ago
Patreon is the gateway for content. It has to be, or it doesn’t work. If I subscribe to a creator, then one of the first things I want to do is go through that creator’s content. Patreon makes this exceedingly painful. Sending you the money is the niche use-case. Viewing the content is core to the UX of most Patreon users.
- Applejinx 8y ago
  You've got it completely backwards. You would never, ever subscribe to a creator unless you're already completely familiar with their content. I'm one of the top-paid creators on Patreon and every pledge is like pulling teeth, just as demanding as selling people stuff out there in the 'real world' in the traditional sell-content model. The difference is, on Patreon I can also give the content away to all and sundry, open-source it, and spend zero time or attention trying to police the digital copying of it. People only being interested in Patreon as a mechanism to send me the money is 99% of my entire userbase, and everybody else's that has a significant revenue from Patreon. That mechanism is NOT as easy or trivial as people make it out to be on Hacker News, and I value it. But you've got it totally backwards, and your type of expectation is what's damaging Patreon and getting them to have dozens of managers and marketing staff. A lot of that headcount is about getting them to do the unwanted, unneccesary and unhelpful.

manigandham 8y ago

The people paying the money are always the customers. Creators get to use Patreon as a tool for showcasing and delivering content and reward. This is a core part of the platform and why both sides use Patreon in the first place. In fact this whole story is about them raising rates to provide more "services" on top like selling merchandise. If all they're doing is collecting and forwarding money then they're one of the most poorly run businesses and massively overbuilt even with their subpar product.

irq11 8y ago

Patreon is the gateway for content. It has to be, or it doesn’t work. If I subscribe to a creator, then one of the first things I want to do is go through that creator’s content. Patreon makes this exceedingly painful. Sending you the money is the niche use-case. Viewing the content is core to the UX of most Patreon users.

Applejinx 8y ago
You've got it completely backwards. You would never, ever subscribe to a creator unless you're already completely familiar with their content. I'm one of the top-paid creators on Patreon and every pledge is like pulling teeth, just as demanding as selling people stuff out there in the 'real world' in the traditional sell-content model. The difference is, on Patreon I can also give the content away to all and sundry, open-source it, and spend zero time or attention trying to police the digital copying of it. People only being interested in Patreon as a mechanism to send me the money is 99% of my entire userbase, and everybody else's that has a significant revenue from Patreon. That mechanism is NOT as easy or trivial as people make it out to be on Hacker News, and I value it. But you've got it totally backwards, and your type of expectation is what's damaging Patreon and getting them to have dozens of managers and marketing staff. A lot of that headcount is about getting them to do the unwanted, unneccesary and unhelpful.